Human-caused habitat destruction and pollution has led to various downstream consequences — among them, the spread of various diseases. In Brazil, scientists are warning about a debilitating parasitic disease that is currently on the rise, MedicalXpress reported.
The disease, schistosomiasis, is carried by parasitic worms, which are spread by freshwater snails. It can cause abdominal pain, diarrhea, and blood in the stool, with long-term effects including kidney damage and even bladder cancer.
Public health officials are now concerned that deforestation and extreme weather events such as flooding could help the snails expand their range, infecting even more people. In 2021, over 250 million people required preventative treatment for schistosomiasis. Scientists worry that, without major intervention, that number could grow even higher in coming years.
"With climate change, more frequent and intense rains will impact many diseases here, including schistosomiasis," said Roseli Tuan, a senior researcher at the São Paulo Secretariat of Health. "Understanding these changes is a necessary area of science for the control of the disease in the future."
To help fight the disease, researchers at the São Paulo Secretariat of Health have teamed up with Stanford University scientists to try to predict how it will spread.
"For the first time, we have been able to combine tools like long-term snail surveillance records with satellite imagery that tracks agricultural expansion, the growth of urban areas, and climate at fine resolution across entire countries," said Erin Mordecai, a Stanford professor who is involved in the research. "With these tools, we can map how the habitat for schistosomiasis-transmitting snails is changing across Brazil with unprecedented precision that helps us understand where schistosomiasis could appear next."
Other diseases that have been aided by the overheating of our planet include those spread by mosquitoes, such as dengue fever, malaria, Zika virus, and more. Mosquitoes thrive and breed in hot, humid environments, and as the planet overheats, their habitats and ranges are expanding.
To keep people safe from these deadly diseases, we must use every scientific tool at our disposal in the short term and, in the longer term, stop the overheating of our planet by turning away from dirty energy sources like gas and oil and toward clean, renewable sources like wind and solar.
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